“We have a right and duty to rebel in the face of this tyranny of idiocy—in the face of this planned collective suicide.”

Activists gathered under the banner Extinction Rebellion in London on Wednesday to issue their Declaration of Rebellion against the U.K. government’s climate inaction. (Photo: Extinction Rebellion)

To underscore the planetary emergency and denounce the U.K. government’s inaction on the climate crisis, a new group calling itself Extinction Rebellion rallied over 1,000 people to block Parliament Square in London on Wednesday. The direct action marks the launch of a mass civil disobedience campaign, with the group issuing a “Declaration of Rebellion” against the government because the activists “refuse to bequeath a dying planet to future generations by failing to act now.”

Police arrested 15 people taking part in the action, but organizers say the wrong people were taken into custody. “If we lived in a democracy,” Extinction Rebellion declared in a tweet, “the police would be here to arrest the criminal politicians who are wrecking the planet.”

Noted speakers at the action included Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, journalist George Monbiot, and 15-year-old Greta Thunberg, the Swedish schoolgirl “on strike” from school over her own government’s climate inaction. “We’re facing an immediate unprecedented crisis that has never been treated as a crisis and our leaders are all acting like children. We need to wake up and change everything,” she stated.

Green Party MEP Molly Scott Cato took part as well. In an op-ed at the Guardian, she explained that she felt there was no alternative to being a lawmaker turned law-breaker. “We are prepared to halt lorries entering fracking sites; to stand in the way of bulldozers building roads and block traffic along heavily congested and polluted streets. Direct actions like these have a long and proud history; it’s time to carry them through in a systematic way to protect the climate, and to be willing to be arrested for doing so.”

Pointing to the latest IPCC report and the World Wildlife Fund’s latest assessment of the Earth’s declining biodiversity, she added, “It is no exaggeration to say that our survival as a species is at risk. Enough. Enough of words; of hypocrisy and broken promises. It’s time to act.”

The declaration declares, in part: “The ecological crises that are impacting upon this nation, and indeed this planet and its wildlife can no longer be ignored, denied, nor go unanswered by any beings of sound rational thought, ethical conscience, moral concern, or spiritual belief. ”

As such, we “declare ourselves in rebellion against our government and the corrupted, inept institutions that threaten our future,” it continues.

They charge they government of having “wilful complicity” that “has shattered meaningful democracy and cast aside the common interest in favor of short-term gain and private profits.”

“This is our darkest hour… The science is clear—we are in the sixth mass extinciton event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly.”
—Declaration of Rebellion“This is our darkest hour… The science is clear—we are in the sixth mass extinciton event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and robustly.”—Declaration of RebellionThe declaration, said noted U.S. climate activist and author Bill McKibben, “should ring true not just for Brits, but for Americans (who have a declaration in their past) and for people anywhere.”

Wednesday’s action was far from the end of the road for Extinction Rebellion; they’ve got a week of action lined up for mid-November in London if their three demands— that the government openly communicate the severity of the crisis and urgency for change; enact legally binding policies to slash emissions; and allow for a Citizens’ Assembly to monitor and hold government to account for enacting to “the bold, swift, and long-term changes necessary”—aren’t met.

“This is just a warm up. Rebellion Day is on November the 17th. Same time, same place,” the environmental group, which is backed by nearly 100 leading academics, tweeted.

The escalating actions, they say, are because we “are raging against this madness and our hearts are breaking.”

“We have a right and duty to rebel in the face of this tyranny of idiocy—in the face of this planned collective suicide.”

“We are going to act,” the group says, “and in acting together we will overcome.”

OUR POSITION

It’s time! Join us!

We are in an ecological crisis caused by climate change, pollution and habitat destruction; a mass species extinction on a scale much larger than the one which killed the dinosaurs is underway. Our course is set to societal collapse, the killing of millions, likely billions of people – human extinction is possible. The future is bleak and our children are not safe.

Change to avert the worst of the disaster is still technically and economically possible. The changes won’t be simple but there is nothing more important or worthwhile. It involves creating a world which is less frenetic and more beautiful; making the necessary changes will also create jobs. This is an emergency situation – action is urgent.

Our Government isn’t acting in accordance with what science and history tells us. Therefore our Government is criminally negligent. We have a moral duty to rebel, whatever our politics. Social science shows us that peaceful civil disobedience is an effective way to bring about change. Our lives have meaning and purpose when we follow our conscience and are willing to make sacrifices to protect what we love. We ask others who feel the same way to join our peaceful Rebellion.

DEMANDS

That the Government must tell the truth about how deadly our situation is, it must reverse all policies not in alignment with that position and must work alongside the media to communicate the urgency for change including what individuals, communities and businesses need to do.

Good intentions and guidelines won’t save the ice caps. The Government must enact legally-binding policies to reduce carbon emissions in Canada to net zero by 2025 and take further action to remove the excess of atmospheric greenhouse gases. It must cooperate internationally so that the global economy runs on no more than half a planet’s worth of resources per year.

By necessity these demands require initiatives and mobilization of similar size and scope to those enacted in times of war. We do not however, trust our Government to make the bold, swift and long-term changes necessary to achieve this and we do not intend to hand further power to our politicians. Instead we demand a Citizens’ Assembly to oversee the changes, as we rise from the wreckage, creating a democracy fit for purpose.

PRINCIPLES & VALUES

WE HAVE A SHARED VISION OF CHANGE Creating a world that is fit for the next 7 generations to live in.

WE SET OUR MISSION ON WHAT IS NECESSARY Mobilizing 3.5% of the population to achieve system change – such as “Momentum-driven organizing” to achieve this.

WE NEED A REGENERATIVE CULTURE Creating a culture which is healthy, resilient and adaptable.

WE OPENLY CHALLENGE OURSELVES AND THIS TOXIC SYSTEM Leaving our comfort zones to take action for change.

WE VALUE REFLECTING AND LEARNING Following a cycle of action, reflection, learning, and planning for more action. Learning from other movements and contexts as well as our own experiences.

WE WELCOME EVERYONE AND EVERY PART OF EVERYONE Working actively to create safer and more accessible spaces.

WE ACTIVELY MITIGATE FOR POWER Breaking down hierarchies of power for more equitable participation

WE AVOID BLAMING AND SHAMING We live in a toxic system, but no one individual is to blame.

WE ARE A NON-VIOLENT NETWORK Using nonviolent strategy and tactics as the most effective way to bring about change.

WE ARE BASED ON AUTONOMY AND DECENTRALISATION We collectively create the structures we need to challenge power. Anyone who follows these core principles and values can take action in the name of RisingUp!

Pledge of Rebellion–we demand concrete action on the ecological crisis

We the undersigned find ourselves in an intolerable position. Ignoring the ecological crisis is no longer an option for us. The science is clear, on our current course, our children and grandchildren are being handed an unprecedented disaster, we are in the 6th mass species extinction. A catastrophe is certain, human extinction is a possibility.Our Government is complicit in allowing greenhouse gas emissions to rise and ignoring the constraints of a finite planet in favour of an economic system demanding rampant consumerism. When a Government fails to protect its citizens from harm and fails to secure the future for generations to come it has failed on the most basic of its duties. Across the political spectrum, from John Locke to Thomas Hobbes, it is understood that the social contract with Government is broken in the face of such abject failure. We understand that it is not only our right, it is our duty to rebel on behalf of life itself.

Therefore we the undersigned declare our support for the Extinction Rebellion, launching this October 31st. We stand behind the demands for the Government to tell the hard truth to its citizens and to come up with a credible plan for a rapid decarbonisation of our economy. To enable a Citizens Assembly to oversee this.

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Why Ms Perry wants to protect steak and chips

She said: “I like lots of local meat. I don’t think we should be in the business of prescribing to people how they should run their diets.”

When asked whether the Cabinet should set an example by eating less beef (which has most climate impact), she said: “I think you’re describing the worst sort of Nanny State ever.

“Who would I be to sit there advising people in the country coming home after a hard day of work to not have steak and chips?… Please…”

Ms Perry refused even to say whether she agreed with scientists’ conclusions that meat consumption needed to fall.

A dereliction of duty?

Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth responded: “The evidence is now very clear that eating less meat could be one of the quickest ways to reduce climate pollution.

“Reducing meat consumption will also be good for people’s health and will free up agricultural land to make space for nature.

“It’s a complete no-brainer, and it’s a dereliction of duty for government to leave the job of persuading people to eat less meat to the green groups.”

He said the government could launch information campaigns, change diets in schools and hospitals, or offer financial incentives.

Ms Perry said: “What I do think we need to do is look at the whole issue of agricultural emissions and do a lot more tree planting.

“But if you and I eat less meat, with all the flatulent sheep in Switzerland and flatulent cows in the Netherlands – that will just be wiped out in a moment. Let’s work on the technology to solve these problems at scale.”

She said instead of cutting down on meat, we could use (hugely expensive) equipment that sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Supper with the Perry family

Ms Perry said later that her own typical family meal is not steak and chips, but a stir-fry, which brings the taste and texture of meat into a dish dominated by vegetables. But she did not want to say this on camera.

She agreed it was appropriate for the government to advise people on healthy diets because the obesity epidemic is costing taxpayers more in health bills, but implied that this principle did not apply when considering the health of the planet.

Her fear of being condemned in the media as a bossy politician highlights the difficulty of the next phase of climate change reductions.

Until now, 75% of CO2 reductions in the UK have come from cleaning up the electricity sector. Many people have barely noticed the change.

Will the climate battle get personal?

Experts generally agree that for healthy lives and a healthy planet, the battle over climate change will have to get personal.

That could mean people driving smaller cars, walking and cycling more, flying less, buying less fast fashion, wearing a sweater in winter… and eating less meat.

People will still live good lives, they say, but they’ll have to make a cultural shift.

If governments do not feel able to back those messages, they say, the near impossible task of holding global temperature rise to 1.5C will become even more difficult.

Ms Perry’s comments came as she launched Green GB week, which aims to show how the UK can increase the economy while also cutting emissions.

After the panicky IPCC report on climate change, it’s easy for pessimism to set in – but that would be conceding defeat.

‘Climate change is an inescapable present and future reality, but the point of the IPCC report is that there is still a chance to seize the best-case scenario rather than surrender to the worst.’

In response to Monday’s release of the IPCC report on the climate crisis – which warned that “unprecedented” changes were needed if global warming increases 1.5C beyond the pre-industrial period – a standup comic I know posted this plaintive request on her Facebook: “Damn this latest report about climate change is just terrifying. People that know a lot about this stuff, is there anything to be potentially optimistic about? I think this week I feel even worse than Nov 2016 and I’m really trying to find some hope here.”

A bunch of her friends posted variations on “we’re doomed” and “it’s hopeless”, which perhaps made them feel that they were in charge of one thing in this overwhelming situation, the facts. They weren’t, of course. They were letting understandable grief at the news morph into an assumption that they know just how the future is going to turn out. They don’t.

The future hasn’t already been decided. That is, climate change is an inescapable present and future reality, but the point of the IPCC report is that there is still a chance to seize the best-case scenario rather than surrender to the worst. Natan Sharansky, who spent nine years in a gulag for his work with Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, recalls his mentor saying: “They want us to believe there’s no chance of success. But whether or not there’s hope for change is not the question. If you want to be a free person, you don’t stand up for human rights because it will work, but because it is right. We must continue living as decent people.” Right now living as decent people means every one of us with resources taking serious climate action, or stepping up what we’re already doing.

Climate action is human rights, because climate change affects the most vulnerable first and hardest – it already has, with droughts, fires, floods, crop failures. It affects the myriad species and habitats that make this earth such an intricately beautiful place, from the coral reefs to the caribou herds. What we’re deciding now is what life will be like for the kids born this year who will be 82 in 2100, and their grandchildren, and their grandchildren’s grandchildren. They will curse the era that devastated the planet, and perhaps they’ll bless the memory of those who tried to limit this destruction. The report says we need to drop fossil fuel consumption by 45% by 2030, when these kids will be 12. That’s a difficult but not impossible proposition.

The histories of change that have made me hopeful are often about small groups that seem at the outset unrealistic in their ambition.

Taking action is the best way to live in conditions of crisis and violation, for your spirit and your conscience as well as for society. It’s entirely compatible with grief and horror; you can work to elect climate heroes while being sad. There are no guarantees – but just as Sakharov and Sharansky probably didn’t imagine that the Soviet Union would dissolve itself in the early 1990s, so we can anticipate that we don’t exactly know what will happen and how our actions will help shape the future.

The histories of change that have made me hopeful are often about small groups that seem at the outset unrealistic in their ambition. Whether they were taking on slavery in antebellum USA or human rights in the Soviet bloc, these movements grew exponentially and changed consciousness and then toppled institutions or regimes. We also don’t know what technological breakthroughs, large-scale social changes, or catastrophic ecological feedback loops will shape the next 20 years. Knowing that we don’t know isn’t grounds for confidence, but it is fuel against despair, which is a form of certainty. This future is as uncertain as it’s ever been.

There have been countless encouraging developments in the global climate movement. The movement was small, fragmented, mild a dozen years ago, and the climate recommendations then were mostly polite, with too much change-your-lightbulbs focus on personal virtue. But personal virtue only matters if it scales up (and even individual acts depend on collective decisions – I have, for example, 100% renewable electricity at home because other citizens pushed our amoral power company to evolve, and it’s more feasible for me to ride a bike because there are now bike lanes all over my city).

The movement that has taken on pipelines and fuel trains, refineries and shipping terminals, fracking and mountaintop removal, divestment and finance, policy and law, and sometimes won is evidence of what can happen in 12 years. Some of what were regarded as climate activists’ wild ideas and unreasonable demands are now policy and conventional common sense. There are so many transformative projects under way from local work to transition off fossil fuels, to the effort to stop pipelines (with some major victories, including the one to stop the Trans Mountain pipeline, which won in court in late August), to the lawsuit against the US government on behalf of 21 young people, charging it with violating their rights and the public trust. The trial begins on 29 October in Eugene, Oregon.

The other thing I find most encouraging and even a little awe-inspiring is how profoundly the global energy landscape has already changed in this century. At the beginning of the 21st century, renewables were expensive, inefficient, infant technologies incapable of meeting our energy needs. In a revolution at least as profound as the industrial revolution, wind and solar engineering and manufacturing have changed everything; we now have the technological capacity to largely leave fossil fuel behind. It was not possible then; it is now. That is stunning. And encouraging.

A child in flood-affected Bangladesh in 2017. What we’re deciding now is what life will be like for the kids born this year who will be 82 in 2100. Photograph: Zakir Chowdhury/Barcroft Images

Astoundingly, 98% of the energy Costa Rica generates is from non-fossil fuel sources. Scotland closed its last coal-fired power plant two years ago and overall emissions there are half what they were in 1990. Texas is getting more of its energy from wind than from coal – about a quarter on good days and half on a great day recently. Iowa already gets more than a third of its energy from wind because wind is already more cost-effective than fossil fuel, and more turbines are being set up. Cities and states in the USA and elsewhere are setting ambitious goals to reduce fossil fuel consumption or go entirely renewable. Last month California committed to make its electricity 100% carbon-free by 2045. There are stories like this from all over the world that tell us a transition is already under way. They need to scale up and speed up, but we are not starting from scratch today.

The IPCC report recommends urgent work on many fronts – from how we produce food and to what use we put land (more forests) to how we generate and use energy (and the unsexy business of energy efficiency also matters). It describes four paths forward, three of which depend on carbon-capturing technologies not yet realized, the fourth includes the most radical reductions in fossil-fuel use and planting a lot of trees.

The major obstacles to this withdrawal are political, the fossil fuel and energy corporations and the governments obscenely intertwined with them. I called up Steve Kretzmann, the longtime director of the climate policy-and-action group Oil Change International (on whose board I sit), and he reflected on the two approaches to climate action – changing consumption and changing production.

Going after production often gets neglected, and places like Alberta, Canada, like to boast about their virtuous energy consumption projects while their energy production – in Alberta’s case, the tar sands – threatens the future of the planet. Addressing production means going after some of the most powerful and ruthless corporations on earth and the regimes that protect them and are rewarded by them – or, as with Russia and Saudi Arabia and to some extent the US are indistinguishable from them.

Five countries – Belize, Ireland, New Zealand, France and Costa Rica – are already working on bans on new exploration and extraction. Steve told me: “We have to be real about this: this is the oil industry and wars are fought over it. There’s a lot of political power here and there’s a lot of people defending that power.” But he also noted: “The moment it’s clear it’s inexorably on the wane, it will pop.” You can hasten the popping by cutting the enormous subsidies, and by divesting from fossil fuel corporations – to date the once-mocked divestment movement has gotten $6tn withdrawn. As Damien Carrington reported for the Guardian last month, “Major oil companies such as Shell have this year cited divestment as a material risk to its business.”

We also need to shut down production directly, with a just transition for workers in those sectors. Five countries – Belize, Ireland, New Zealand, France and Costa Rica – are already working on bans on new exploration and extraction, and the World Bank sent shockwaves around the world last December when it announced that after 2019 it would no longer finance oil and gas extraction.

Given that the clean energy comes with lots of jobs – and jobs that don’t give people black lung and don’t poison surrounding communities – there’s a lot of ancillary benefit. Fossil fuel is, even aside from the carbon it pumps into the atmosphere, literally poison, from the mercury that contaminates the air when coal is burned and the mountains of coal ash residue to the toxic emissions and water contamination of fracking and the sinister chemicals emitted by refineries to the smog from cars. “Giving up” is often how fossil fuel is talked about, as though it’s pure loss, but renouncing poison doesn’t have to be framed as sacrifice.

Part of the work we need to do is to imagine not only the devastation of climate change, and the immense difference between 2 or 3 degrees of warming and 1.5 degrees, but the benefits of making a transition from fossil fuel. The fading away of the malevolent power of the oil companies would be a profound transformation, politically as well as ecologically.

I don’t know exactly if or how we’ll get to where we need to go, but I know that we must set out better options with all the passion, power and intelligence we have. A revolution is what we need, and we can begin by imagining and demanding it and doing what we can to try to realize it. Rather than waiting to see what happens, we can be what happens. And by the way, the comedian I mentioned: she’s already organizing fundraisers for climate groups.

Help CHI ‘stop the forever fishing’

After twenty-one years of diving as a commercial diver, witnessing what one can only describe as an attack on our marine life by the dumping of plastics, rubber tires and a million different kinds of trash, along with thousands of ‘ghost nets’ in our oceans; I decided to do what the governments and people who dumped into our oceans, were neglecting to do, clean up our harbours and eventually remove the ‘ghost nets’ that are killing marine life of all kinds. ‘Ghost nets’ are nets that are lost and are forever fishing.

A few years back while at work one day, I swam across an old fishing net with no ropes attached to it for hauling up, just sitting there on the bottom, fishing away. A ghost net. This particular ghost net contained many different kinds of marine life; crabs, Flounders, Manta Rays, birds, sea urchins and the most disturbing one of all, a harp seal. In its struggle to get air to breath, it had the net pulled together enough to get itself within a couple feet of the surface, where it drowned. Being a person who spends a tremendous amount of time under water, I know far to well how much fear that animal felt. Heartbreaking…

I have been doing some clean up over the years and have removed some ghost nets, but never documented it. Little over a month ago I began to clean up some ocean trash; plastics, tires and whatever I came across, from harbours and beaches. I have photographed and posted to my Facebook page most of my dives and the trash we collected. Even though I am loving what I’m doing and collecting a lot of ocean trash, I feel like my efforts are no where near enough. My plan is to have a crew of three volunteer divers, two tenders (boat operators) and as many volunteers on the shore, as possible. In order to do this, it will cost much more then I can afford on my own. I need your help.

Please help me in getting this plan put into action. Together we can grow Clean Harbours Initiative into something wonderful. We can inspire millions around the world to start cleaning up the trash from generations before us. To date, I have approximately $25,000.00 of my own money invested in Clean Harbours Initiative. We need so much more to keep the momentum going and keep the trash coming out of the water. So if you want to be a part of this Clean Harbours Initiative, please support us by liking and sharing our pic’s… but most of all, we need your donations. Message me if you can help… Thank you in advance for your generosity! Shawn Bath

Our politicians, under the influence of big business, have failed us. As they take the planet to the brink, it’s time for disruptive, nonviolent disobedience.

Illustration by Bill Bragg

It is hard to believe today, but the prevailing ethos among the educated elite was once public service. As the historian Tony Judt documented in Ill Fares the Land, the foremost ambition among graduates in the 1950s and 60s was, through government or the liberal professions, to serve their country. Their approach might have been patrician and often blinkered, but their intentions were mostly public and civic, not private and pecuniary.

Today, the notion of public service seems as quaint as a local post office. We expect those who govern us to grab what they can, permitting predatory banks and corporations to fleece the public realm, then collect their reward in the form of lucrative directorships. As the Edelman Corporation’s Trust Barometer survey reveals, trust worldwide has collapsed in all major institutions, and government is less trusted than any other.

As for the economic elite, as the consequences of their own greed and self-interest emerge, they seek, like the Roman oligarchs fleeing the collapse of the western empire, only to secure their survival against the indignant mob. An essay by the visionary author Douglas Rushkoff this summer, documenting his discussion with some of the world’s richest people, reveals that their most pressing concern is to find a refuge from climate breakdown, and economic and societal collapse. Should they move to New Zealand or Alaska? How will they pay their security guards once money is worthless? Could they upload their minds on to supercomputers? Survival Condo, the company turning former missile silos in Kansas into fortified bunkers, has so far sold every completed unit.

Most governments, like the UK, Germany, the US and Australia, push us towards the brink on behalf of their friends.

Trust, the Edelman Corporation observes, “is now the deciding factor in whether a society can function”. Unfortunately, our mistrust is fully justified. Those who have destroyed belief in governments exploit its collapse, railing against a liberal elite (by which they mean people still engaged in public service) while working for the real and illiberal elite. As the political economist William Davies points out, “sovereignty” is used as a code for rejecting the very notion of governing as “a complex, modern, fact-based set of activities that requires technical expertise and permanent officials”.

Nowhere is the gulf between public and private interests more obvious than in governments’ response to the climate crisis. On Monday, UK energy minister Claire Perry announced that she had asked her advisers to produce a roadmap to a zero-carbon economy. On the same day, fracking commencedat Preston New Road in Lancashire, enabled by the permission Perry sneaked through parliament on the last day before the summer recess.

The minister has justified fracking on the grounds that it helps the country affect a “transition to a lower-carbon economy”. But fracked gas has net emissions similar to, or worse than, those released by burning coal. As we are already emerging from the coal era in the UK without any help from fracking, this is in reality a transition away from renewables and back into fossil fuels. The government has promoted the transition by effectively banning onshore wind farms, while overriding local decisions to impose fracking by central diktat. Now, to prevent people from taking back control, it intends to grant blanket planning permission for frackers to operate.

None of it makes sense, until you remember the intimate relationship between the fossil fuel industry, the City (where Perry made her fortune) and the Tory party, oiled by the political donations flowing from both sectors into the party’s coffers. These people are not serving the nation. They are serving each other.

Other governments shamelessly flaunt their service to private interests, as they evade censure by owning their corruption. A US government report on fuel efficiency published in July concedes, unusually, that global temperatures are likely to rise by 4C this century. It then uses this forecast to argue that there is no point in producing cleaner cars, because the disaster will happen anyway. Elsewhere, all talk of climate breakdown within government is censored. Any agency seeking to avert it is captured and redirected.

In Australia, the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, has turned coal burning into a sacred doctrine. I would not be surprised if the only lump of coal he has ever handled is the one he flourished in the Australian parliament. But he dirties his hands every day on behalf of the industry. These men with black hearts and clean fingernails wear their loyalties with pride.

If Jair Bolsonaro takes office in Brazil, their annihilistic actions will seem mild by comparison. He claims climate breakdown is a fable invented by a “globalist conspiracy”, and seeks to withdraw from the Paris agreement, abolish the environment ministry, put the congressional beef caucus (representing the murderous and destructive ranching industry) in charge of agriculture, open the Amazon Basin for clearance and dismantle almost all environmental and indigenous protections.

With the exception of Costa Rica, no government has the policies required to prevent more than 2C of global warming, let alone 1.5C. Most, like the UK, Germany, the US and Australia, push us towards the brink on behalf of their friends. So what do we do, when our own representatives have abandoned public service for private service?

On 31 October, I will speak at the launch of Extinction Rebellion in Parliament Square. This is a movement devoted to disruptive, nonviolent disobedience in protest against ecological collapse. The three heroes jailed for trying to stop fracking last month, whose outrageous sentences have just been overturned, are likely to be the first of hundreds. The intention is to turn this national rising into an international one.

This preparedness for sacrifice, a long history of political and religious revolt suggests, is essential to motivate and mobilise people to join an existential struggle. It is among such people that you find the public and civic sense now lacking in government. That we have to take such drastic action to defend the common realm shows how badly we have been abandoned.